In brief
A Letter of Good Standing is not a certificate of character. It is a receipt for an assessment account that was up to date on the day it was printed, and it rests entirely on the Returns of Earnings filed behind it. On 08 September 2026 the Department of Employment and Labour published Notice 4140 of 2026 in Government Gazette 55347, a final reminder to every employer not complying with section 82 of COIDA to submit outstanding Returns of Earnings for 2025 and prior years. [1][2] The date is 31 October 2026. Miss it and the Compensation Commissioner may raise an assessment on an estimated earnings basis under section 83(6)(a), and may impose a penalty of up to 10 percent of the final assessment under section 83(6)(b). [1] The notice also records, in its own words, that the department has the right and the obligation to conduct employer compliance reviews and audits. [1] This article explains what the notice actually says, why the employers it targets are the least likely to know it exists, and what a principal contractor should do about the letters sitting in its supplier file.
What the notice says
The instrument is short and worth reading literally. It is headed a final reminder for the submission of 2025 and prior years outstanding Returns of Earnings, and it is addressed to employers who are not in compliance with section 82 of the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act. [1] Section 82 places the duty to submit the prescribed return, form CF-2A or W.As 8, on the employer, and the notice is explicit that the responsibility rests with the employer to ensure the return is submitted rather than with the Fund to chase it. [1]
Three consequences follow a missed date, and they compound rather than substitute for one another. First, the Commissioner may raise an assessment on an estimated earnings basis under section 83(6)(a). [1] That matters more than the penalty, because an estimate is not a negotiation: the assessment is calculated on the Commissioner's figure, not on what the employer actually paid its people, and the burden of correcting it afterwards sits with the employer. Second, the Commissioner may impose a penalty not exceeding 10 percent of the final assessment under section 83(6)(b). [1] Third, the notice reserves the department's right and obligation to conduct employer compliance reviews and audits against COIDA. [1] The notice is signed by the Acting Commissioner of the Compensation Fund, the same office that fixed the ordinary 2026 assessment season at 01 April to 30 June 2026 by gazette in April. [3]
Outstanding returns can be submitted online at cfonline.labour.gov.za or by email to [email protected]. [1]
Why this one is easy to miss
This is not the annual season, and that is precisely the problem. The Return of Earnings season runs from 01 April to 30 June each year, it is well known, payroll providers remind their clients about it, and we have written about it before in "The 30 June COIDA deadline: what the Return of Earnings means for your Letter of Good Standing". [3] Everything in that article still holds. Notice 4140 is a different instrument doing a different job: a one-off catch-up window pointed at a population the annual cycle never reaches, namely employers carrying returns that were never filed in earlier years.
The distinction is worth stating plainly, because the two are easy to conflate. The season deadline is about this year's return and carries a 10 percent late penalty on the assessment. [3] Notice 4140 is about every year before this one, carries the same 10 percent, and adds the part that does the real damage: an assessment raised on the Commissioner's own estimate of your earnings. [1] An employer who submitted this year's return on time, received an assessment and holds a current-looking letter may still have an unfiled 2023 or 2024 return behind it. Nothing in the ordinary annual cycle surfaces that.
The population most exposed is therefore the one least likely to be watching the Government Gazette: a small employer whose bookkeeping changed hands at some point, who switched payroll providers, or who registered, filed once, and assumed the matter was closed. The gap is usually administrative rather than deliberate, which is exactly why it survives for years without anyone noticing.
What a principal contractor should do differently
There is a second reading of this notice that has nothing to do with your own returns. If you are a principal contractor, you almost certainly hold a Letter of Good Standing for every subcontractor on site, collected once at onboarding and filed. Those letters were accurate on the day they were issued. Some of them are now sitting in front of unfiled returns, and after 31 October 2026 some will be sitting in front of an estimated assessment and a penalty.
That is not an abstract risk for the contractor holding the file. The allocation of duties between a principal contractor and its subcontractors under section 37 of the OHS Act, and what the principal contractor answers for when a subcontractor's paperwork does not hold up, is dealt with in our companion article on section 37 and the mandatary agreement. The practical step here is narrower and can be done this month: ask each subcontractor for a letter issued after 31 October 2026, rather than relying on the one collected at onboarding. A letter with a date on it is evidence about that date and nothing else.
What to do before 31 October
The work is unglamorous and mostly clerical. Confirm, for every year from 2025 backwards, that the return was not merely prepared but successfully submitted and accepted, because a return that failed validation on the portal is indistinguishable from one that was never filed. File anything outstanding before 31 October 2026 and keep the submission confirmation, not just the working papers. Reconcile the assessment against actual earnings rather than accepting an estimate quietly. Then re-request the Letter of Good Standing, so the document you hand to a client reflects the returns behind it rather than an older position.
GRC Shop view
This section is interpretation, kept separate from the sourced facts above.
Our view is that this notice is a small, precise illustration of the thing that actually goes wrong in compliance, and it is worth naming plainly. Nobody in this story did anything careless. The return was filed, the assessment was paid, the letter was issued, and it was a true document. Then time passed. The letter did not change, the filing position did, and no part of the ordinary annual cycle was designed to notice the difference. Compliance files go stale. Our system keeps yours current.
That is also why we do not think the answer is a reminder. A reminder assumes someone knows which return is missing, and in the cases this notice is aimed at, nobody does, because the gap opened during a handover that felt routine at the time. What closes it is holding the evidence and its dates in one live record instead of across a filing cabinet, a payroll provider's archive and a folder of PDFs collected from subcontractors, so that a document which has aged out is visible as such before a client or an inspector points it out. That is the case for a managed record generally, and it is the same case whether the ageing document is a Letter of Good Standing, a risk assessment or an appointment letter.
Our forecast, clearly marked as opinion, is that the estimated assessment under section 83(6)(a) will prove to be the sharper end of this notice rather than the 10 percent penalty, because a penalty is a known quantity and an estimate is not. We also expect the letters collected at onboarding across the construction supply chain to be the quiet casualty, since almost nobody re-dates them.
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Abbreviations
- COIDA: Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act
- DEL: Department of Employment and Labour
- OHS: Occupational Health and Safety
- ROE: Return of Earnings
- SME: small and medium enterprise
References
The sources below are external links to third-party websites. We link only to publicly accessible pages and check periodically that the links still work.
[1] Department of Employment and Labour, "Final reminder for the submission of 2025 and prior years outstanding Return of Earnings (ROEs), Notice 4140 of 2026, Government Gazette 55347", 08 Sep 2026. https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/202609/55347gen4140.pdf
[2] CRS, "CRS News Flash 11 September 2026, South Africa, COIDA, Final Reminder to Submit Outstanding ROEs", 11 Sep 2026. https://www.crs.co.za/crs-news-flash-11-september-2026-south-africa-coida-final-reminder-to-submit-outstanding-roes/
[3] Department of Employment and Labour, "Notice issued by the Acting Compensation Commissioner under the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act, General Notice 3894 of 2026, Government Gazette 54524", 15 Apr 2026. https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/202604/54524gen3894_0.pdf
[4] Webber Wentzel, "COIDA amendments take effect: What employers need to know", 2026. https://www.webberwentzel.com/News/Pages/coida-amendments-take-effect-what-employers-need-to-know.aspx